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Facilitators

About Us

The Committee For Relevant Art, organizers of the Lagos Book and Art Festival, is a group of concerned artists, artistes, culture activists, as well as critics, connoisseurs, enthusiasts and patrons of the arts brought together by a shared sense of purpose and a common resolve to create a platform for the promotion of the centrality of Culture and the Arts to the proper development of the African society.

In 2006, the organization received the Prince Claus Award For Culture and Development, from the Dutch Government.

CORA PROFILE
::The Committee for Relevant Art (CORA)::

The Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) came to life on June 2, 1991. It's a culture activist organisation with the agenda to facilitate creation of an enabling environment for the flourishing of the contemporary arts of Nigeria , in the forms of Literature, Theatre, Fine Art, Movie, TV Programme Design and Production as well as Music. In these past 15 years, CORA has been in the forefront of championing the major issues that have shaped – directly or otherwise – the cultural landscape of Nigeria .

The members operate as a body of facilitators of the sharing of ideas through the creation of the sort of interactions that lead to the birth of ideas or sharpening of existing ideas. Some of the most forward-looking initiatives in the Nigerian culture environment came out of CORA-organized fora.


::CORA Programmes::

CORA has carried on this intermediation role through the vehicle of its various programmes, projects and activities including the following:

1. The Art Stampede

2. The Annual Lagos Book & Art Festival

3. Lagos – The City Arts Guide (LCAG):
This is a quarterly publication on the cultural life of the city of Lagos , arguably Nigeria 's culture capital and the entry port into the nation's business and commercial industries. In its short time of existence, LCAG was already beginning to force itself on the consciousness of the practitioners in the culture setting of the city, the culture of disciplined schedule and calendar which is the hallmark of all advanced tourist countries of the world.

4. The Great Highlife Party

 

5. The Arthouse Forum:
This is a monthly session of exploration into fast-breaking development in the arts and culture sector of Nigeria . It is set up as an agenda setting forum for those who administer culture in Nigeria . From the Forum they could test the pulse of the arts and culture community. It is usually arranged around landmark event in the life and career of personalities in the culture sector. It is organized on the platform of the Friends of the Arts, Lagos (FOAL), a CORA initiative.

6. Lagos Circle of Critics (LCC):
Periodic meeting of journalists, art critics, art commentators, and practitioners with bias for criticisms and historical developments around the arts.

7. Culture Working Committee, which passes developmental ideas regularly to civil servants in charge of culture administration in the country.

8. We have also been collaborators on a number of other projects including -

    • The BOBTV annual film and television programme expo, Abuja, of which, starting from the 2006 edition, we are now the collaborators and resource facilitators for the colloquium;

    • The Lagos Comic Carnival the first edition of which we incubated in our Festival in 2004 is an idea birthed by three CORA members in collaboration with the other group of young men and women creating the silent revolution in the newly developing area of comic publications and animation (they are so enthused they've started referring to it as an industry) in Nigeria.

    • National Festival of Arts and Culture – the annual celebration of the diverse artistic and cultural expression of the peoples of Nigeria , organised by the Federal Government.

    • In addition, now and then, members of CORA are encouraged to participate in other international cultural programmes with the aims of contributing our quota to the formulation of ideas as well as articulation of cultural agenda for the universe. In this instance we have networked and worked on workshops, symposiums, seminars etc with UNESCO, Commonwealth Foundation, British Council, The Goethe Institut, the Public Affairs Department of the American Embassy, The Netherlands Embassy, the Russian Embassy, the Japanese Embassy etc.

9. CORA Library Projects:
CORA plans to establish a project under which libraries will be established in major cities of Nigeria , especially the under-served areas of the cities. The library is where we would articulate all our ideas about the imperatives of reading, book, and literature for national development. This is why we support Book Clubs as part of the extension service outposts in dissemination of the ideas in books. We however take the view that libraries and book clubs should go beyond the upper middle class clientele.

We are focusing on Lagos at the moment because the city habours 10% of the Nigerian population. If Lagos is 15million as estimated, then having 15 well equipped, adequately staffed community libraries with community related activities along readership campaign in Lagos for a start is a much cheaper way to obliterate the ignorance of our people.

10. CORA, Volunteers, Supporters and Sponsors:
At the very least, CORA organizes over twenty events annually, some of them, such as the Lagos Book and Art Festival, are hosted over many days in different venues with participants drawn from both within and outside the country. Also, various publications, including journals, magazines, news releases and fliers go out to the public in fulfillment of some of our mandates. For all these sponsorship of our programmes and projects are drawn mainly from the resources of the core CORA team. For the Festival for example, outside sponsorship is only enough to pay about a sixth of our total bill, although it is a cheap festival; no more than five of six million Nigerian naira. But all the payments, including advert payments, never reach one million naira in a year. The rest we have to come up with, as individuals.

In principle however, CORA's support base is made of the CORA Core team, volunteers, patrons etc.